Glens Falls house lights aflame for Halloween
GLENS FALLS, N.Y. (NEWS10) - Last Saturday, the Glens Falls Fire Department responded to a report of a house fire on Sanford Street. When they arrived, they found no such blaze - but rather, a Halloween haunt one day before the turning of the month.
"They loved it," said Matthew Schies, owner of the house at 77 Sanford St. where, this Halloween, the windows light up in flickering orange to simulate a house on fire. "After the first ones left, another group showed up and said they were told to come check it out."
Over the weekend, the department shared a notice on Facebook letting neighbors on Sanford Street and around the city know to expect an incendiary glow and the flicker of flames coming from inside the house. The display will be lit every Friday and Saturday night through October.
From a distance, the phenomenon looks like bedsheets flapping in the wind - but the actual solution is digital. Schies and his partner found the solution on the website Atmosfx, which offers projection-based holiday decorations for Halloween, Christmas, and other holidays. The setup required a few digital downloads, some projectors at the ready, and about a month of work, all within less than 10 hours of setup in total.
As of late Friday afternoon, the fire department's Facebook post had garnered 1.7 million views - and if you don't live there, that's a lot more than the population of Glens Falls. Schies has seen it picked up by news stations around the country, as well as India and the United Kingdom. With that much popularity comes some amount of negative blowback - but the homeowner isn't too let down by it.
"As for the negative comments, I try to ignore them. It seems something is always triggering something in someone somewhere at any given time," he said. "People seem pretty excited to see it."
77 Sanford St. is set to go up in fictional flames around 6:30 - 7 p.m. every weekend in October.